If you haven’t been living in some far-off galaxy at the corners of the universe these past two/three years, then you’ve surely heard of Orange Is The New Black. Come on, I know you did. «That show about those chicks in prison that’s really boring but girls dig it». Got it? Great. But in all honesty Orange Is The New Black, or OITNB, as it’s often called (because we know that Americans are all for acronyms. TBBT, HTGAWM and so on), is so much more than a simple «chick show». It’s one of the most important series to ever have landed on television in the last decade, I believe, and here I’ll try to explain to you why.
Let’s start with some details. Directed by Jenji Kohan, OITNB was first released on Netflix (mythic and divine Netflix that will soon hit Italian computers, after years of prayers) on June 2013. It’s based on the memoir book ‘Orange Is The New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison‘, written by Piper Kerman, who is no other than the real life inspiration for the show’s protagonist, Piper Chapman. And since we mentioned Piper, we can say something about the plot as well, since it all starts with her, with Piper. A thirty-something WASP-y woman living in Brooklyn and about to marry a really amazing guy, Larry, until she finds herself locked up for a year for being a drug mule during her college years with her then girlfriend Alex Vause. The show’s two seasons (and the upcoming one) follow her life in Litchfield, the women’s prison she’s in, and showcase an amazing kaleidoscope of different characters and stories, all connected with a beautiful flashback structure that takes us into the inmates’s life «out there».
The real question is, «what makes OITNB so famous?», and even more, «why is it a show that everyone and their mothers should follow?», «why is it so important, and it’s fundamental that today’s television is overwhelmed by series like this?». I’m sure you’ve all heard endless praises basically on every social network ever, but if you’re still not completely persuaded, let’s start with saying that OITNB is real. Real almost like only a documentary can be. OITNB’s characters expand beyond their own definitions, crashing through archetypes and stereotypes like a waterfall, and they almost become people. They live in a spectrum of grey, with different sides and emotions just like the ones we experiences. They’re made of layers and depths. They’re not indestructible, always ready to walk out of trouble with their heads high and that kind of very improbable luck that’s common in other series. They don’t talk in one-liners. What I think is their greatest accomplishment, though, is that they make us think, they shout prejudices and ideas we didn’t even realize we had internalized right in out face. They force us to change, at least a little bit, and whatever work of fiction that can to this not-at-all-easy task deserves every prize it gets – and OITNB has prizes galore, from Emmys to GLAADs to Critic’s Choice to Satellites (besides, what else could you expect from a series who had the highest viewers’s count ever in the history of Netflix Original, the same place from where House of Cards and Arrested Development came out?).
And this spirit of realism is just the first item in a very, very long list. In our society we’re pushed to believe that a person’s life is always running on two binaries. Religious or atheist. Gay or straight. Good or bad. An endless sequence of aut aut promoting the idea that we lead a life of absolutes, when in truth more or less anyone falls somewhere on a spectrum. The exceptionality of OITNB is that it shows us this spectrum, and this incredible group of women (and men) that live right in it.
- Sexuality
This series is one of the first in my long career as a telefilm addicted that gets the idea of sexuality not being black or white. Piper herself says so, when she talks to her family about her previous relationship with Alex, and they all dive on her asking the usual stuff like, «So you were gay back then?», «Are you going to become gay again if you meet her?». What Piper replies is really important, «You don’t just turn gay. You fall somewhere on a spectrum, like on a Kinsey scale», and it’s such an easy and yet fundamental concept that so many people still struggle to comprehend. A Kinsey scale goes from 0 to 6, where 0 is completely heterosexual and 6 is completely homosexual, but doesn’t forget all the numbers in between. And neither does OITNB, quite the contrary – it represents all those numbers in its episodes, with different and different women.
First of all Piper, who’s had relationships with people of both sexes but prefers not to label herself, because in the end she’s still a bit unsure of who she is; Alex, her ex girlfriend, charming and well assured of her sexuality. Nicki, one of the most beloved characters in the series, lesbian and witty and harsh, and like her Big Boo. And then there’s my favorite, Poussey, who was dating a girl out of Litchfield, was forced to leave her when their relationship was discovered, and now lives this painful unrequited love for her friend Taystee.
And let’s not forget that these women are played by actual members of the LGBT community – Samira Wiley, for example, the actress playing Poussey, is currently with one of the show’s writers, Lauren Morelli.
- Gender
OITNB has shone light on the general dark ignorance surrounding the ’T’ in LGBT thanks to Sophia, a MtF person played by actress Laverne Cox, who ended up behind bars because of credit card fraud. Sophia dispenses wisdom not just to the other inmates, but to the viewers at home as well; with her pride and fierceness, she tears down every construct that society has ever made about gender. Through Sophia, OITNB is helping to bring down the social stigma still surrounding gender identity, and is honestly on of the few shows focusing on this issue.
And let’s not even mention the extraordinary acting skills of Laverne, one of the leaders of today’s transgender rights’ movement, and the grace she uses to bring to us the story of Sophia’s transition and her relationship with her wife and son.
- Race
Even if Piper, the main character, is a white woman, the show is one of the first to present a cast rich with women of different ethnicities, not limiting itself to the single black or hispanic sassy friend in a mainly white cast whose only purpose is to fill the representation quote. More so, if you really look at Piper, you can see that she embodies white privilege, at least in the first episodes (where most of the series’s fans really can’t stand her) – she’s entitled, she’s annoying, and we realize how much she’s privileged when we put her in a perspective with the other characters she interacts with, bot inside and outside of Litchfield. Piper herself sees it, along with the development of the story – when her best friend goes visit her and tells her all about Brooklyn’s latest trends, what Piper hears is how vane and frivolous her life and her reality used to be, and how much Litchfield as changed her and the way she views the world.
Thanks to this incredibly diverse cast, OITNB can maintain an unique point of view on race-based discrimination and privilege, raising more questions and debates. Let’s add to this the viewers’s satisfaction of seeing themselves – all of them – represented, and not in the stereotypes of the sassy black woman or the asian nerd.
- Body Standards
We all know how the story goes when it comes to bodies in television, and once again OITNB crashes through these unspoken rules like a tank, and revolutionizes the whole thing. The show doesn’t use bodies that are not ultra thin as an object of derision, and neither shames thinness.
For example, when prison guard Bennet, playes by Matt McGorry, falls in love with one of the inmates, it’s not Maritza, who everyone says looks like Sofia Vergara, but it’s Daya, who is not what Cosmopolitan would call ’skinny’ and ‘fashionable’. And then again, when the cliché says that «the fat girl will always be rejected by the one she loves because of her body shape», OITNB gives us Taystee, who is overweight, and declines the romantic attentions of Poussey. Then there’s Big Boo, the bed-buddy of basically everyone around Litchfield, and who destroys the idea that fat people shouldn’t even think about sex, because it’s forbidden to them.
By now it’s well known how much the bodies we see in television influence the way we think, and how important it is to see the widest variety of them. OITNB is paving the way to what we hope will be the norm, one day.
- Morality
This, this is where OITNB proves that it’s really incredible. The show as a unique capacity of pushing its audience to question not only the moral compass of the characters, but mostly their own. Think about it. We all have a favorite inmate, we all can empathize with them and their stories, the difficulties they had to face, but technically they all should be the «bad ones». Aren’t they all in prison? And so we begin to wonder what ‘being bad’ really means. Are you just born bad, or maybe good intentions drive you to a completely different path? Are there completely good people? Litchfield even has a nun between its inmates! Is prison really what’s best to correct these women? OITNB is not a show you just sit down and relax watching. No no. If by the end of an episode we’re not full of questions we could discuss about for hours, then maybe we should watch it again.
All of this to say how extraordinary is Orange Is The New Black, and how universal are its themes, despite it having an almost full-female cast. Yet this is not a show for women. It’s a show for human beings, and men shouldn’t be scared by the high female presence (unlike I’ve read around the Internet). Want some more good reasons to stay? First of all, the script. Brilliant dialogues, witty and original jokes, no clichés, deep thoughts and touching storylines. Then there’s the fact that OITNB is a very accurate portrayal of how women friendships actually go (because it’s not like we talk about dresses and purses and men all the time), how women romantic relationships work, and of how much women can be terrible to other people. We’re in a prison, after all, and so each and every one of the characters has broken the law to some degree, just like a male inmate would do (and we see it all in the flashbacks, from heists to street fights and drug wars). And finally, the male characters are as real and as well built as the female ones – the prison guards at Litchfield have been developed and explored just like the inmates, and they too go beyond stereotypes and prejudices.
OITNB is a show for everyone, a real pearl that you shouldn’t miss. It’s a feminist show that doesn’t linger in its feminism, because it’s too busy telling these amazing stories; it’s a show that passes the Bechdel test with no sweat without hitting you in the head with it; it’s most of all a show that understands that life is one big mess, and portrays it without shame and limitations, in all its defects and crazy moments.
There’s a reason why you jump on your chair the exact moment you hear the first notes of the beautiful ‘You’ve Got Time‘, composed and performed by Regina Spektor for the opening credits, and it’s all summed up in Laverne Cox’s words, «For me, as a woman, thinking about how women are represented on our show, I actually like to think about the audience. I like to think about the demographic of people who come up to me on the street. There’s not a lot of shows where you have Asian, Latina, Middle Eastern, black, white, gay, straight, trans, and men, straight men, gay men watching the show, and they’re all watching. And the array of people, it’s like a Benetton ad on crack. The people who come up to me who are fans of the show, who are fully invested, are a testament to the diversity of our cast, and to what it means to tell stories that people really can see themselves in. And I think our audience, they’re enthralled, but I think a lot of people are seeing themselves in ways that are surprising to them and ways that they really connect with. Everyone is a complicated human being, and everyone is strong and weak and funny and scared, and we get to have the full range of emotion experienced with these women.We just see these amazingly complicated women, who are strong, and vulnerable, and scared, and want to support each other at the end of the day. I think about #YesAllWomen and the culture of misogyny. And we have pockets of that, we do have places where we celebrate women a lot, but I think the way the culture is aligned and structured is misogynistic. It just is. So it’s really great to have a show that creates spaces that really do celebrate women and our diversity, and not just one kind of woman. That’s revolutionary.»
Orange Is The New Black is revolutionary, yes. It’s a show about everyone, and for everyone. It’s a show for humans that explores what it means to be human. So do yourself a favor – get caught up in a glorious binge-watching session, and enjoy season three.
